It's normal in Ireland. I can always get one same day or next day.

I feel like this infographic is full of shite on the GP part tbh.

Javelins are pretty good kit.

I mean there's a saint named after them.

And yeah it would seem crazy to sacrifice it if it wasn't damaged in fairness.

Magnificent.

That's my understanding. It's a long time ago but I believe they bought out Sun when they were facing bankruptcy.

If they'd released the x86 version of Solaris when it became clear that SPARC couldn't keep up with Intel and AMD that could have been a possibility.

Solaris was such an amazing OS.

What a great twist. I've had solid success with ChatGPT for stuff like that in the past so put your description in and it couldn't come up with anything.

It did give some useful information which I can paste in here if you don't have an account?

Mostly it was asking if you could remember any other detail like character names, setting or even tone of the writing.

I miss having hair

Same. I nearly never wore the pony and only just noticed it after posting this pic. It was peak Nirvana days (and I saw them later that year in Dublin or maybe the next year) and we called that hairstyle an "undercut". Here's a pic from the same trip where it was my usual. I am pretty sure this is on the overnight train from Moscow to St. Petersburg.

Oh, the other thing that really is burned into my memory is that there was a wedding party in the McDonald's when we went there. Bunch of Western kids absolutely inhaling big mac's and they were having hamburger and small fries. They were so happy and I felt like such a glutton.

It was one of those uncomfortable life changing moments where you are forced to look at how good you have it.

Thank you! I was wondering if I'd made some unspoken mistake.

I honestly feel so privileged to have been there at that time in history. My folks had to scrape the money together for the trip and it was such an incredible experience. I saw first hand the poverty suffered there. It was pretty grim. We were told to bring US dollars (pre-Euro days) and we exchanged them daily because the USD to Ruble rate was changing so fast.

The biggest story from the trip was that one guy got mugged by the police at gunpoint at a Spartak Moscow football game.

The other big one was that we went to the circus one night. Well it involved some fairly hefty animal cruelty so myself and a few others walked out (teachers didn't notice), tried to catch a cab, eventually paid the bus driver that was supposed to bring us back to the hotel to organise one for us and headed in to central Moscow unsupervised and went to the only Pizza Hut in the country (which was near the only McDonalds in the country).

We got back before the teachers noticed. I honestly do not know to this day how that happened.

Agreed. I think a huge part of it is down to how many kids are vaping here too. Saw an interview with the Taoiseach (prime minister) and he said 13% of 12-17 year olds had vaped in the last 30 days. Pretty crazy number.

Well I am delighted. €13.1B + the 1.2 in interest represents what will be a bump of 16% of total tax revenue compared to 2023 (€88B total). There are lots of things that money can be used for.

I heard about a guy once, who was a POW, and his friend wanted him to keep a watch for his son so he shoved it way up there.

The reference for the younger among us.

Looks really good. Grabbed it. Thanks!

Are you using a VPN maybe?

Must be great to have such a consistent shipper of arms that lets you use them however you want.

Wow. That's fascinating, thanks for the details. Interesting that you're mostly seeing pro-Trump stuff as from the article the dems are outspending the Trump campaign.

Total ad spend so far by both parties comes to $16.61 per person in the state. DAMN.

Indian food is special because it uses something called “spice” and no one else does apparently

Was in Hyderabad for work a few times about 10-15 years ago and in fairness, India is the absolute GOAT of spicing food. Like every dish is flavourful but not necessarily spicy. Office canteen food costing about 40c served on a prison tray - Incredible. Hell even the airport food was delicious.

Apparently they were googling "time in moscow" when following up on an invoice per Ryan McBeth so they are guilty as fuck.

We don't really have that whole active shooter thing here tbh.

He doesn't strike me as violent, just a self important cunt.

We're neutral militarily, not morally. :)

And yeah inspections on landed planes would be a resourcing issue but I took from reading that article that it was an airspace violation in this instance.

Yeah absolutely unenforceable. Honestly this all strikes me as much ado about nothing. Someone didn't realise, sorry lads won't happen again, end of issue.

For what it's worth: A lot of American military planes have landed at Shannon airport as a half way point between the US and middle East for refuelling. For a decent while after 9/11 the Irish taxpayer was picking up the fuel bill when they did as a gesture of goodwill / solidarity. I vaguely recall hearing a million a day at the time but that could be rubbish.

Ireland is strictly neutral but in practice it gets scooched around a lot for friends and / or obvious land grabs by dictators. We've done sapper training in Ukraine for example.

Great camera work in fairness.

Pyjama lady came out of nowhere.

In the early days of ransomware I helped a small business of a friend that was attacked. They got in and waited months, creating garbage backups until they were confident then sprang the trap.

Tbh I was impressed with how thorough they'd been.

Our small company paid a prominent (of that specific driver) open source driver writer for prioritisation of some work more than once. All the code was GPL.

I know it's only one data point but it's one way.

Wild! Like how we punch that far above our weight in the rugby is mind blowing to me. I know NZ has a small population too but they're all about the rugby. There are honestly feck all rugby clubs in Ireland compared to the GAA or footie but the ones that do exist play at a ridiculous level.

edit: I was curious so went looking. It looks like there are less than 50 clubs on the whole island. Now a lot of secondary schools play at a very high level in Dublin and Limerick and wouldn't have a club associated with them so that's not the full picture, but still.

There is a club in my town, but only one other that I can see in a ~25KM radius whereas there would be probably 20x that of GAA and football clubs in the same area.

Ireland also a bit of an outlier where the dominant sport isn't soccer.

Video of some hurling for those who've never seen it.

One of Gaelic football.

I know, right?!?

I have actually heard about that. Google "gutter oil" if you want some nightmares. They are working on food safety hard though.

Yeah Western China is basically empty. It's very mountainous and the land is not fertile.

I mean, it’s still a largely rural country

Not so. Wikipedia has a decent article but here's the crux of it:

By the end of 2023, China had an urbanization rate of 66.2% and is expected to reach 75-80% by 2035

The cities are massive and really densely populated. Shenzhen and Guangzhou are about 90 minutes apart by car if memory serves and account for about 35M people. Hong Kong is an hour south of Shenzhen by train and that's another ~8M.

I've spent a decent bit of time there on a few work trips. Never saw differentiation of eggs in supermarkets (or restaurants). Eggs be eggs.

A huge number of folks are just coming into non-poverty since the turn of the century so it would seem entirely plausible to me that chicken comfort wouldn't be a thing there just like it wasn't in the west until comparatively recently and still isn't for a huge part of the population.

Apart from that it's really very different culturally. They just view things through an entirely different (and interesting) lens.

Looks really good.

This one sparks joy.

OK, looks like it's probably Red Bull.

"Red Bull is a well-known energy drink originating from Austria."

I had to search this one up it's so bizarre. "Flavoured water" covers the following:

"Waters, including mineral and aerated waters, containing added sugar or sweetening matter, flavoured; other non-alcoholic beverages, not including fruit or vegetable juices"

So it's very broad really. Still bananas.

More information here.

Definition here.

Ireland: Some secondary schools started back late last week. My own secondary level kids were today. Primary kids are this coming Wednesday.

Some days, I even think maybe I might be a good person too

You sound like a good person to me. That level of self reflection rarely / never leads to being a shithead in my experience.

Crazy story but a very interesting read. Thanks for sharing.